RPG Design: Why Can't I Get Past The Stupid Door?
Shamus Young has an absolutely awesome post on Twenty Sided Tale entitled, "The Plot-Driven Door." Game designers take note. (Including me).

I haven't played NWN2 (yet, though I still intend to, in spite of Shamus's warnings... I am more interested in online play than the original campaign anyway), but his arguments hit home. The rogue fan in me in particular cheers at this comment: "For crying out loud, we’re talking about circumventing walls and doors. That’s half of D&D, right there. There is an entire character class dedicated to this sort of activity."

Amen. In particular, I love his illustration of all the things a group of players in a dice & paper version of the NWN 2 campaign would come up with. Forge entry papers? Climb the friggin' wall? Find out how food and information are being smuggled in and out, and use that route? It all smacks of lazy and poor game design.

Hopefully I won't have to eat my own words once my own CRPG is released (don't hold your breath... with Apocalypse Cow still clambering towards Beta, it's only in the design stages with some extremely early prototype proof-of-concept stuff). But if I screw up on this, please feel free to call me on it and embarass me. I'll have deserved it.

Here are some design principles I'm trying to follow to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Maybe if I post them here in public where I can be ridiculed if I screw 'em up, I won't forget them.

#1 - Don't Tease The Player With The Larger Goals
Your player knows what he wants to do, and wants to make progress towards it. So don't pile on lame sub-goals that are:
a) Excessive in number
b) Aren't clearly related to the larger goal
c) Don't measureably progress the player towards the larger goal.

If you violate these, the player will feel like he's spinning his wheels, and may grow frustrated.

#2 - Focus On Goals Being Accomplished, Not How They Were Achieved
This was was once espoused by Richard Garriott (AKA Lord British), when he was creating Ultima 5 or 6. Assuming I remember correctly, he explained that he felt it was his responsibility to come up with *one* solution to an obstacle, but beyond that it he didn't try too hard to eliminate other paths to achieve a goal. So you might use a key to open a door... or you might push a cannon in front of it and let 'er rip to blow the door down.

From a game design perspective, this simply borrows a page from many of the more simulation-oriented games. It doesn't matter what you did to accomplish the objective... all that matters is that you achieved it. That was part of what made Operation: Flashpoint and the first two Thief games so compelling. Even if you played through the scenario exactly as the designers expected, you still had the illusion that you were out-clevering the game, possibly even "cheating" somehow.

The problem with this more interactive and open-ended design methodology is that it conflicts with traditional linear storytelling. I mean, if you kill the traitor before the big reveal that removes all doubt to the entire country that he was the traitor, what happens? Doing truly interactive storylines are crazy-hard (Chris Crawford has been at it for nearly two decades now, and doesn't have a whole lot to show for it yet), so you can't just expect the game to "roll with it." At least not the big stuff. The evil traitor is going to have to be protected somehow until the game is ready to let the players bring him to justice.

It means you have to be flexible with storylines, and flexible with how the underlying game triggers on events. It's not easy, but it's possible.

#3 - Where Possible, Let The Player Choose His Own Sub-Goals or Side-Quests
Let the player pick how he's going to achieve the larger goal. This could simply be the order in which things get chosen, or in the best case, let them think they came up with the solution on their own.

For a couple of examples: In Ultima IV, people wouldn't entrust you with their secrets until you'd proven yourself. Sounds a bit like the problem with the NWN2 gate, huh? But rather than going on a bunch of peon quests, you had to choose for yourself how you'd earn enough of the required virtue to win them over. You made your own side quest. In Ultima Underworld, a key item was held by a man who was afraid of the dark. I don't remember why you couldn't just kill him to take the item (or even if it was an item, and not a clue), but he could be bargained with by offering light sources. It was up to you how you obtained the light sources.

#4 - Avoid Springing Suprise Sub-Goals On The Player
"Thank you, Mario, but the Princess is in another castle!"

Amusing once. Maybe twice. But it gets old fast. Plot twists are one thing - especially if you telegraph them in advance so the player is kicking himself afterwards for not seeing it coming. But arbitrarily (and repeatedly) snatching away victories to load the player with additional tasks is just irritating.

#5 - Come Up With A Plan To Integrate Content Into the Overall Story and World
What might have happened with NWN2 is that a bunch of level-designers all did their quests separately, and they were all pulled together with a flimsy storyline about earning the trust of the guards. I'm all in favor of having a mass of talented people cranking out quests for a game, but they have to be consistent in tone and flavor, and well-integrated into both the environment and the storyline. Otherwise, at best they should be optional side-quests (and that only if they can be made to fit nicely within the world).

#6 - When Unavoidable, Cover It With Good Writing.
If you are forcing the players into certain courses for the sake of the plot, then the plot had BETTER reciprocate, with dividends. If your story is so dang awesome that it is more important than allowing them the freedom to choose, don't wait until the end of the game to prove it.

The Final Fantasy games kept getting away with plot-railroad after plot-railroad, mainly because of the distraction of shiney cut scenes and expression of over-the-top angst. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it works.


(Vaguely) related grumblings:
* RPG Design: The Brute Force Problem
* Innovation in RPGs?
* Designing a Computer RPG Rule System
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Labels: Game Design, Roleplaying Games

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